How To Get ChatGPT To Respond In Your Tone

May 03, 2023

“We are all apprentices in a craft where no one ever becomes a master.”

~ Ernest Hemingway

Welcome to The Pen Pivot!

At 9am (EST) every Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, we show tech-savvy writers how to use AI and new tech to write better content, faster.

In today’s email:  

  • AI Tool Of The Day 🛠️ - A large ChatGPT prompt library

  • AI Writing Tip Of The Day🖋️ - A prompt to get ChatGPT to write in your writing voice and tone.

AI Tool Of The Day 🛠️

AIPRM: An extension that gives you access to a bunch of great ChatGPT prompts for copywriting, SEO, marketing, productivity, and more. (Not sponsored)

AI Writing Tip Of The Day đź–‹ď¸Ź

ChatGPT Prompt: “The Tone Mimic”

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery?

Well, let’s just say, ChatGPT made me blush like a ripe cherry tomato this morning.

Let me explain.

As cliché as it might sound, a writer will often develop a “voice” that becomes recognizable over time.

The trouble with using AI tools to assist with writing is that they don’t respond in your voice.

That’s fine. We can’t expect them to.

Ultimately, we’re just going to edit their draft in our own voice in any case, right?

Sure.

But to cut down on editing, I created a prompt to get ChatGPT to respond in my own voice and tone. 

I initially asked ChatGPT to analyze a piece of my writing and create a “tone guide”.

I can now establish the tone for any writing tasks I give ChatGPT by adding this tone guide before each prompt.

Use the following prompt template and ChatGPT will make you your very own tone guide. As always, fill in the blanks, copy, and paste: 

“ChatGPT, I’m about to give you a sample of my writing. Please analyze and break down the tone of my writing, giving me the answer in the form of a bulleted list that I will refer to as my “tone guide”. Please do not refer to specific parts of the text. Simply use the text to help you come up with the tone guide.

Sample text of my writing:

[insert a representative sample of your writing, ideally at least a few paragraphs]

Type of writing I do: [eg. a blogger, journalist, crime novelist, academic writer, etc]

Target audience (optional): [insert here - who do you usually write for?]”

Example:

I pasted a few paragraphs from one of my blog posts. Then, I told ChatGPT I was a men’s style writer and that my target audience was usually men’s style enthusiasts.

I actually write in a variety of different styles and contexts, so it would make sense to have a tone guide for each one.

Here’s the tone guide ChatGPT created for me in this instance:

Zoom in if you have to.

From now on, I’ll copy and paste this tone guide to prime ChatGPT before giving it a writing task. Like this:

“ChatGPT - I’ve pasted my tone guide below. Refer to it when performing any writing tasks I give you from now on. I want you to use it to respond in my writing style”.

It’s never going to perfectly mimic your tone.

But priming ChatGPT with a tone guide will generate responses you and your usual readers are more likely to resonate with.

Try it out! Build your own tone guide.

If anything, it’s just insightful to see the tone of your own writing broken down in such a thoughtful way.

A quick poll (in case you haven't done it already)! 🙂

We're creating a paid video course for people who want to take AI-assisted writing to the next level. If this is you, which of the following courses would you be most interested in?

Login or Subscribe to participate in polls.

And that’s all for today!

See you tomorrow 🙂. I’ll be showing you a ChatGPT prompt you won’t want to miss.

Misya, The Pen Pivot